- [godep](https://github.com/tools/godep) reads Godeps/Godeps.json by running godep restore from k8s.io/client-go in your GOPATH. Then use godep save to vendor in your project. godep will choose the correct versions from your GOPATH.
- [glide](https://github.com/Masterminds/glide) reads Godeps/Godeps.json automatically from its dependencies including from k8s.io/client-go, both on init and on update. Hence, glide should be mostly automatic as long as there are no conflicts.
- [dep](https://github.com/golang/dep) does not currently respect Godeps/Godeps.json in a consistent way, especially not on updates. It is crucial to specify client-go dependencies manually as constraints or overrides, also for non k8s.io/\* dependencies. Without those, dep simply chooses the dependency master branches, which can cause problems as they are updated frequently.
- The Kubernetes and golang/dep community are aware of the problems [[issue #1124](https://github.com/golang/dep/issues/1124), [issue #1236](https://github.com/golang/dep/issues/1236)] and [are working together on solutions](https://github.com/kubernetes-dep-experiment/client-go). Until then special care must be taken.
Please see client-go’s [INSTALL.md](https://github.com/kubernetes/client-go/blob/master/INSTALL.md) for more details.  


### Updating dependencies – golang/dep
Even with the deficiencies of golang/dep today, dep is slowly becoming the de-facto standard in the Go ecosystem. With the necessary care and the awareness of the missing features, dep can be (and is!) used successfully. Here’s a demonstration of how to update a project with client-go 5 to the latest version 6 using dep:  

(If you are still running client-go version 4 and want to play it safe by not skipping a release, now is a good time to check out [this excellent blog post](https://medium.com/@andy.goldstein/upgrading-kubernetes-client-go-from-v4-to-v5-bbd5025fe381) describing how to upgrade to version 5, put together by our friends at Heptio.)  

Before starting, it is important to understand that client-go depends on two other Kubernetes projects: [k8s.io/apimachinery](https://github.com/kubernetes/apimachinery) and [k8s.io/api](https://github.com/kubernetes/api). In addition, if you are using CRDs, you probably also depend on [k8s.io/apiextensions-apiserver](https://github.com/kubernetes/apiextensions-apiserver) for the CRD client. The first exposes lower-level API mechanics (such as schemes, serialization, and type conversion), the second holds API definitions, and the third provides APIs related to CustomResourceDefinitions. In order for client-go to operate correctly, it needs to have its companion libraries vendored in correspondingly matching versions. Each library repository provides a branch named release-_\<version\>_ where _\<version\>_ refers to a particular Kubernetes version; for client-go version 6, it is imperative to refer to the _release_-1.9 branch on each repository.